The X-Files: Three Smokes at the Jazz Bar

The season 5 X-Files finale, "The End", offers many memorable images --from a tiny psychic nerd-boy playing championship chess in a crowd of faceless thousands to Scully and Mulder silently embracing in their blackened, melting, dripping office after a symbolic act of arson, red and blue emergency lights strobing over them-- and some remarkable moments from the performers (the best: Scully spots Mulder privately conferring with his previous X-Files partner, Diana Fowley, retreats to her car and silently fumes with jealousy, then frets over what she's feeling, and a few other nameless emotional beats, before Gillian Anderson even speaks a word).

But one exterior shot on the mean streets of Vancouver provides a fleeting delight most viewers will never notice.

Cigarette Smoking Man exits Jazz Bar, en route to some dirty business. When suddenly... here comes trouble!

William B. Davis goes about his business, and looks so smoothy malevolent that we pick him out instantly in this wide shot. But look out, CSM: Two cool dudes are cruising up the sidewalk!


Let us move in for a closer look.

Sporting identical big sneakers, caps, windbreakers, mustaches, they are the kind of men who enjoy cigarettes on a fine Vancouver day. And on this day, they have worked up a mutual appetite for either some B.C.-style jazz, a bar, or, as luck would have it, both.

These local boys likely do not know or care for anything involving mind-reading alien-human hybrids, intergalactic colonization, or shadow government assassins!

But they should look out, as they are about to run into at least one of those.


CSM stops and looks around, and our mustache buddy in shades nearly runs into him. But this cool customer just stops short of plowing into Bill Davis, sees that his friend has turned to enter Jazz Bar, and does a hitch step to catch up!


It remains unclear if the fellows in hats had any idea an X-Files scene was shooting. ...if they were supposed to nearly mow down one of the stars on the sidewalk. ...if William Davis noticed this run-in.

Such are the mysteries of The X-Files.